You Should Never Go on a Job Interview

The most frequent complaint I hear from job seekers is they submit a lot of resumes and get few interviews. Countless people have told me, “I applied for this job that I fit perfectly and didn’t even get a call!” They seem to think if you submit a resume showing your skills you're entitled to an interview if not the job itself. This neglects the fact that a couple of hundred other people submitted resumes that show an equally ideal fit.

The Funnel

If you think your resume will get you a job you’re kidding yourself. In today’s competitive market, if it does consider yourself as lucky as a lottery winner. Don’t count on it happening again. Your resume has one purpose: To get you a meeting with the person who will decide who gets the job.

There are two paths to getting a job: the indirect and the direct. In the former, you submit a resume or application (sometimes both) through regular channels and hope for the best. You’re in a funnel designed to reduce around 200 applicants to five. Yes that’s right, on average 5.2 people are interviewed for a job. It’ll take more than the luck of the Irish to make the cut. (I’m writing this on St. Patrick’s Day don’t you know.)

The second path is how most if not all the people the company spoke with got their meetings. While they may have submitted a resume through the regular process, someone inside the company had it pulled and given consideration apart from the masses. Otherwise they sent it straight to the decision maker or someone in the company who passed it along to him. Your resume is your calling card. No more, no less.

You Want a Meeting Not a Job Interview

While in the 19th century interview and meeting were synonymous, today they’re not. An interview is an oral examination of an applicant for a job, college admissions, etc. In other words, you’re the supplicant. If you go in with a beggar’s mindset you’ll most likely come out empty handed.

How do you know you want, let alone will love a job, before you meet the people with whom you’ll be working? Why would a company hire you if you sit passively in an interview answering questions? Will this convince them you’ll be proactive in contributing to the company?

Stop wishing for a job interview. Get a meeting with the decision maker.

Attending a meeting is better because:

Your mindset improves. You are not a supplicant. You’ll talk with the decision maker about how you and the company can benefit. This is what two competent professionals do.

You can demonstrate leadership. You have 50% of the responsibility for making it work. Set your agenda. You should have researched the company and industry. What issues remain open? The better the questions you ask the more likely you are to get hired. A leader knows the ability to ask great questions is as important as having answers.

You can showoff your expertise. No company is going to pay you a high salary so you can learn the business. You can discuss how receptive the organization is to your ideas for improvements that will grow the bottom line. Afraid your suggestions might be rejected and you won’t get the job as a result? Do you want to work in a situation where your initiative is stifled? Isn’t it better to know your perspective doesn’t mesh before you take the job?

The final decision is mutual. Until you’ve heard what the company has to say you should be no more committed to taking the job than the company is to hiring you. After the meeting you can follow up just like you would in any business situation. In the final analysis, the company should be as excited that you’ll accept an offer as you are about working at the company. If it’s not, you won’t have any leverage negotiating salary or anything else. Will you get any respect?

Until you give up begging for a job interview and starting setting up meetings you won’t find the job you want. In the end, you’ll hate going to work or end up starting another job hunt soon after getting hired.

Treat yourself like the professional you want a company to hire and pay well. If you don’t, nobody else will either.

How to you keep from feeling needy or desperate when you badly need work? Please comment below.

Disclosure of Material Connection: Some links in the above post are “affiliate links.” This means if you click on the link and purchase the item, I will receive an affiliate commission. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I use personally and believe will add value to my readers. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guide Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”

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This entry was posted on Sunday, March 20th, 2016 at 03:30 and is filed under Finances, Transitions.
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2 thoughts on “You Should Never Go on a Job Interview”

J W

Employers are not entitled to waste my time. Why are you collecting 500 resumes if you have one job to fill? Take fewer resumes and hire someone from a smaller applicant pool! With that kind of numbers game going, the only thing you guarantee is that the best person available is not hired. You aren't in the bureaucracy business- so stop making paper for the sake of making paper.

I love how you use the language of winning the lottery to describe getting a job. Instead of trashing people that want to work and don't have the ability to tolerate nonsense and time wasting, challenge the attitude that says this is ok. It isn't.